Roots of the State is a timely and impressive piece of scholarship that helps us gain a deeper and nuanced understanding of the shifting and complex relationship between the state and society in mainland China and Taiwan. Drawing from his rich and long-term ethnographic fieldwork on the ground, Benjamin Read not only offers us a meticulous, firsthand, and refreshing account of how what he calls “administrative grassroots engagement” works in two very different settings, but also challenges the existing political theories that are inadequate to grasp the complexity and significance of local governance and power dynamics outside the Euro-American contexts. He does so through a comparative analysis of residents' committees (RC) in Beijing and the li-lin system in Taipei, since the two localities represent two contrasting political regimes—the authoritarian versus the democratic. The central argument of this book is that state-sponsored local-level organizations in reality perform a broad range of social, political, and economic functions serving both the government and citizens, and thus cannot be easily or neatly conceived of as part of the state or civil society. Read demonstrates clearly that the neighborhood associations he studied consist of complex social networks and power dynamics, and occupy a unique position that blurs the conceptual boundary between the state and society. I find this argument compelling and pertinent for a better understanding of changing local politics in Chinese society under reform and global influences. The strength of this book is that its argument is not driven by any rigid theoretical models; rather it is derived from solid empirical research that seeks to bring Asian experiences into a rethinking of Western-centered political theory.
The book has nine chapters including an introduction and a conclusion. The seven substantive chapters are full of valuable data and insightful analysis. Chapter 2 traces the broader historical roots and evolution of administrative grassroots organizations in China and Taiwan. Chapters 3–7 examine closely locality-specific practices and processes of how neighborhood leaders are selected, how their constituents perceive and interact with these organizations, what constitutes the social basis of the RCs and the lizhang (head of the li-lin), and what kinds of power dynamics exist within and around these entities. Moving beyond the China-Taiwan comparison, chapter 8 extends the investigation to other East and Southeast Asian countries in order to identify both the general pattern and the distinctiveness of local governance across space. One of the important findings is that, although Beijing's RC leadership selection is tightly controlled by local authorities while Taipei presents a more democratic electoral procedure, this contrast does not lead to very different responses from citizens to these organizations. Further, despite the fact that the RCs maintain a close tie with the state, residents do not necessarily view them as oppressive; rather, many seek support and help from the RC even if they may be subject to its intervention. In other words, there exists a complex and varied relationship between the RCs and urban residents depending on their specific socioeconomic locations.
While Roots of the State provides a sophisticated account of the changing modes of local governance and political participation in two different regimes, its engagement with social and political theory, in my view, is selective, thus leaving out some potentially very helpful perspectives that can further strengthen the book's main argument. For example, Nikolas Rose's work on the new modes of governing and the power of freedom advocated by neoliberalism has revealed the limits of the state-society approach while urging us not to take categories like “authoritarian regime” and “democratic regime” as discrete and unproblematic. These seemingly very different regimes often adopt similar technologies of governing (such as the notion of “governing through community”) for different purposes. Thus, perhaps it is less useful to label societies as “authoritarian,” “democratic,” or “neoliberal.” Instead, it might be more helpful to unravel how certain modes of governing travel through and articulate with different societies and produce diverse effects.
In many ways, this is an ambitious book given its comparative scope, in-depth research, and important theoretical contribution. Although it is intended primarily for academics, it is very well written, accessible to a wide range of readers, and appealing to those interested in questions concerning state power, local governance, urban politics, political change, and social networks in contemporary China and East Asia. In addition, those interested in postsocialist studies and ethnographies of the state will also find this book valuable. It can be used as a text in teaching graduate seminars and upper-level undergraduate courses on related issues by sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and urban scholars. I recommend it highly.
